Cataloochee Ranch, located in the Southern Appalachian mountains was founded by Tom and Judy Alexander (pictured above, circa 1940) in 1933. The original Ranch was located in the serene and beautiful Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Western North Carolina. The current location is at the top of Fie Top Mountain (approximately seven miles southwest of the original location) bordering the National Park on the Cataloochee Divide.
Tom Alexander (Mr. Tom) was a forester by profession and a lover of the mountains by nature. He came to the North Carolina mountains for his first job with the U. S. Forest Service. Eventually he went to work for the James D. Lacey Company, appraising timberland in the Great Smoky Mountains. Mr. Tom met Judith Barksdale (Miss Judy) on a horseback pack trip in the Pisgah National Forest near Asheville, North Carolina. They were married in 1929, just before the onset of the Great Depression.
In 1929 the Lacey Company declared bankruptcy, still owing Mr. Tom back wages. In lieu of wages, Mr. Tom negotiated with the receiver of the company to take over a fishing camp located in the Three Forks Basin, north of the Cherokee Indian reservation. The young couple set up the Three Forks Fishing Camp and began their career in the hospitality business.
During this period the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was being established in North Carolina and Tennessee. Mr. Tom and Miss Judy leased the old Preacher Hall farm in the Cataloochee Valley inside the Park and opened the original Cataloochee Ranch in 1933. The area was legendary for its abundant fishing streams, and that, combined with horses, touring cars, and superb Virginia cooking, soon established a widespread metropolitan clientele. Unfortunately, the excessive restrictions of the government lease soon had Mr. Tom looking for his own property.
In 1938 Mr. Tom purchased a large part of the present Ranch from Verlin Campbell, the "Potato King" of Haywood County, North Carolina. The property had a sturdy stone and log cattle barn (now the main ranch house), several derelict cabins, sheds, stumpy and eroded pasture land, and a number of excellent "bold" springs. Its 5,000' elevation assured extraordinary mountain vistas and wonderfully cool summer temperatures. In 1961 the Alexanders opened the first ski resort south of Virginia on the property.
By the time of Mr. Tom's death in 1972 the management of the Ranch and Ski Resort had largely reverted to the Alexander daughters and their husbands—Alice and Tom Aumen and Judy and Rick Coker. Miss Judy was able, until her death in 1997, to relax and be the gracious hostess.
The ranch to this day is managed by third generation Alexander family, continuing over 70 years of mountain hospitality.

From
Cataloochee Cooking, by Judy Coker, 1994, Waynesville, NC: James Printing;
and
Mountain Fever: Tom Alexander, edited by Tom Alexander, Jr. and Jane Alexander, 1995, Asheville, NC: Bright Mountain Books.